Happy New Year

"New Year, New You"

I see this slogan everywhere. What is it about the calendar rolling over one digit that makes everyone assume the universe is going to intervene and make their lives somehow different than it was yesterday? Whether it's for better or worse, I don't think the universe is too concerned with an arbitrary numbering system we have placed on it, and I certainly don't think it gives a hot shit that you ate 3600 calories yesterday because "tomorrow I start my diet!".

KJ and I went to the gym on NYE morning (mainly to counteract the volume of alcohol we knew we would likely consume that evening) and it was jam packed. Likely with people doing the same thing we were doing (pre-drinking exercise makes up for the impending hangover that will force us into napping and not exercising the following day, right?). It's a terrible cycle, but I don't expect the magical New Year fairy to fix it for me.

So what did I do yesterday instead of exercise or hope the New Year would save me? I tracked everything I ate, like I did the day before that, and the day before that, and so on, because a new year does not mean a new me. I am me, and I need to keep myself on track. And this morning, I got up and went to the gym, and I tracked the calories I burned, as well as the food I ate when I came home.

If hoping for a miraculous change is what gets you out of bed in the morning and keeps you chugging forward, great. But New Year, New You will only get you 2 weeks in before you realize you need to make your own miracles sometimes.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas (or whatever celebration your family observes this time of year), and I hope everyone has a happy and healthy year ahead. I also wish you all the luck and strength in the world to reach whatever goal you set for yourself. Just do yourself a favour and don't count on the calendar alone to be the way to make it happen.

It's been a while

Two months to the day, to be exact. I will admit, I have slowed down some. I have not been exercising as feverishly as I was. I haven't been to the gym much. I haven't been walking the trails much. I've just come to a crawl.

That said, while I have been crawling along, I have still continued to either maintain or lose weight. The plateaus last a little longer, but that's bound to happen when all I'm doing is watching my intake and not really putting much other effort into weight loss or fitness.

This morning, I weighed myself in at 44lbs under where I started in March. I have a goal to lose 50lbs in a year, and it looks like I may be on track to meet that goal a little earlier than anticipated, so what I will be doing from here on is exercising again to make that happen. Once I hit 50lbs lost, I will be 2/3rds of the way to where I want to end up, and the last part will be much easier on my mind.

I don't give myself a hard time anymore when I slip up, and I don't let one cookie ruin my day. I'm not going to put on 5 lbs from having something I really want once a week. The human body is pretty resilient that way. It's the bad habit of sitting there and mindlessly gorging on junk , or eating whatever we want every single day that does us in, and that is something I simply do not do anymore. If I want some potato chips, I weigh my portion and track it. It really is not hard once you get into that habit, just like it really isn't hard once you get into the habit of swallowing a ream of donuts in one sitting.

No thanks.

On the way down

With KJ back at work for a couple of weeks now and my will power not yet broken, I am proud to say I have been successfully working on weight loss again instead of just maintenance. For the past couple of months I have had no notable change in weight, but yesterday I weighed myself and for the first time since early 2009 I am below 220lbs.

That means that I am down 37lbs from when I started this trek toward being healthier in March. I've had a few hard days, but for the most part I have to say, I've been doing really well. All I need to do now is ramp up the exercise side of things a little more so I can feel fitter, not just lighter/thinner.

In the meantime, I will just continue to enjoy putting on clothes that fit and don't stick on to multiple lumps on my torso.

Weight Loss vs Dressing Yourself

Over the years, my weight and size have gone up and down slowly, and I always kept a collection of "fat clothes", but also an inspirational collection of items I wished to fit into again (or for the first time). On my most recent upswing in dress size, I decided to give away the inspirational clothes because they only reminded me of how fat I'd gotten and how gross I felt. Not my finest half hour, but I limbed out my closet and dresser of every offensive non-plus-sized article of clothing I owned. The inspiration had left them. They inspired me to put on PJ pants and stay home, and that was about it.

Because I got rid of all those clothes, I am currently shrinking inside of most everything I own and have nothing to wear aside from capris and a dress. I'm not complaining, but this is going to create some expensive problems in the next couple of weeks. For example, I currently have only 2 bras that fit. One of them is a hot pink racer-back sports bra. I made the mistake yesterday of wearing a push-up bra that I hadn't realized had grown too big. Pair that with the skinny jeans that fall down when I walk, bend, sit or move in general, and I felt like a train wreck. My mother loaned me a bra that was a cup side too small to cram myself into so I wasn't swimming in the empty padded cups of the now-too-large push-up.

I never expected to lose boobs...they've always been a given.
This wasn't part of the plan!

Fitting 10lbs of shit in a 5lb bag

It is beautiful today. It is sunny. It is hot. It's not windy or humid. It is literally everything summer is supposed to be. It is also 3 days before KJ returns to the ship for 4 weeks and, since we've had approximately 3 nice days since he's been home this month, we are trying to squeeze all the summery fun activity into today that we missed out on.

We got up this morning and walked the dogs to exhaustion to start out on the right foot. That way we won't feel guilty being out and about all afternoon while they're home occupying themselves. Between drives, downtown walking, and social obligations, we are going to make today count!

This post is short, and not funny (#sorrynotsorry), but it is a momentous occasion and I had to document it happened because I've been on the brink of madness with all the oppressive fog and drizzle.

It's all for me!

I don't know how many of you have a significant other who talks in his or her sleep, but it is equal parts cute and creepy. And 100% entertaining. See, I'm the type of person who falls asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow and, if undisturbed, stays in the same position until she wakes up.

My husband, on the other hand, has a sleep persona we have nicknamed Sleepy Jones. Sleepy Jones is a selfish jerk, where my actual wakeful spouse is a caring, generous person. Sleepy Jones can't tell the difference between time to sleep at home and time to work (like he's still on a ship). And most importantly, Sleepy Jones is a nonsensical chatterbox and wanderer, where his counterpart is so quiet most of the time, I have to call out to him to see where he is in the house.

Over the years, there have been varied hilarious encounters with Sleepy Jones. Trying to climb out our bedroom window, for example, because he thought it was time to go relieve someone on the bridge of whatever ship he was working on at the time. Or the night he was shuffling around the perimeter of our bedroom trying to find the door so he could go to the bathroom, only to end up in the closet trying to find the toilet. My least favourite, and only time I was furious enough to yell and actually strike him in the ribs to wake him up, was when I was rudely awakened by his elbow on my forehead, muttering something about a thief and pinning my skull to the mattress.

My personal favourite, however, and one that we still laugh about to this day, is the time I woke up in bed with no blankets as Sleepy Jones was stealing my pillow. It seemed that he had rolled around in bed so much, his own pillow ended up on the floor, so rather than pick it up like KJ would have done, Sleepy Jones decided mine was more convenient. As I lay there, shivering and pissed off because he was swiping my pillow out from under my head, I latched onto it, took a fistful of blankets and started rolling away from him so I could regain some comfort before my rage set in.

He pulled harder, straining against my weight on the blanket with his own; a 4 AM tug of war.

The rage haze rolled in, and I said, "Will you just let go of my fucking pillow and give me some goddamned blankets?!", to which Sleepy Jones replied (clear as day in a creepy voice), "It's all for me!"...and I laughed. Loudly. It woke KJ out of his stupor and he saw what was happening but wasn't fully sure what the situation actually was. To him, it looked like I was stealing his pillow. I recounted the story to him, he laughed and apologized, picked up his pillow off the floor, kissed me and went back to sleep. Then promptly tried to steal my blankets.

For a man who would give me anything, he sure is a greedy ass when he's asleep. But sometimes, he is super cute and ridiculously funny because this morning, in the dark comfort of our bedroom, I was browsing Facebook on my phone while he slept peacefully beside me and out of nowhere, he says "You know what I just realized Jurassic World was missing? Jeff Goldblum." Zzzz...

How can you not love that?

Thank you, Sun Lord!

This weekend's weather was just as atrocious as it has been ever since the day after KJ got home from sea. We both had given up hope to ever see the sun again, and so we comforted ourselves with food, alcohol, frozen yogurt (it may have been cold outside, but it is never too cold to go to Menchie's), and people-watching at various public locations.

"See that one? No, the other one! Nevermind, you missed it...thong outside of her pants!"

To help ourselves forget the misery that was the hideous excuse for summer we were were suffering through, we decided to have some people up for a BBQ on Saturday evening. Since it turned out to be a rain-free evening, we also managed to get a fire roaring in the back yard fire pit! Naturally, fire pits attract more alcohol (and marshmallows on sticks), so suffice it to say, I over-indulged. A lot. I'll spare the details that ended with me swinging from a tree branch and being rescued by a friend (maybe two? I'm not sure) and led safely to stairs so I could go inside, but don't think that is because I am embarrassed by them. I simply can't recall said details.

While I may not regret the things I can't remember, I certainly was regretting the amount of drinking I forgot I did when I woke up yesterday. Yesterday was what my best friend and I affectionately refer to as "Sack o' Shit Sunday", and it lived up to its name. I felt like shit. I looked like shit. Hell, for the first half of the day, I felt like throwing up and shitting simultaneously, but it never happened. Thankfully. After awhile, the sickness passed and I was left with a dull headache and a savage hunger for fish & chips/ poutine.

"Can't it be both?"

Yes, it can. And it was delicious. So after ruining my insides all weekend with fat, sugar and booze, today I started back where I left off. We got up this morning and walked the trails from here to the nearest Tim Horton's (which is 3.5 km away), and back. The hike burned 767 calories and took 1 hour and 20 minutes, give or take a few. We stopped for a gawk at a forest fire/ car fire on the way home, since we were in the forest (a safe distance away) and could see the fire trucks heading in the direction of the billowing smoke. Of course this kind of thing happened on the one time I didn't bring my phone with me to capture a couple pictures. On the plus side, everything went fine, nobody was hurt, and the fire was extinguished.

As rare as watching a fire fight is, the really exciting part was that we also got the treat of seeing the SUN come out on our walk home. And it stayed out. All day! It was calm, hot and I even got a slight sun burn from sitting on the patio since I'm an idiot and forgot sun screen.

"Forgot"...my ass.

In any event, today I feel great. I got sunshine and exercise, and consumed no alcohol and very little sugar or fat. After this past week of dietary carnage, that is a huge victory. And with camping with some of my favourite people/bad influences coming up this weekend, I need the drying-out period.

So does my liver.